20 Male Film Actors That Influence Me Most (Part 1)

Ladies and Gentlemen, what are blogs for if not for obtusely personal opinion lists? Therefore I thought it only fittin, in my sixth post, to compile one. My choice was to compile a list of film actors whose body of work most influenced me. I rated them on how much I draw on them and their performances for inspiration in my own work. I want to be clear, this is not a list about stage performances, though many of these actors have illustrious stage careers, this is a list that is purely based upon their respective film work. This is also not a list about my favorite film performances (though some of them would cross over into that realm.) For instance, Michael Caine in Cider House Rules would be on that list but is not here. He is not because his body of work has not influenced me all that much until very recently when I read his memoir What’s It All About? (a memoir every young character actor who is frustrated enormously should read.) 

All right, so here’s how I organized this list. I have numbered it beginning with 20 to 1, obviously, and if you are the one out of my ten readers who needs to see who number one is; you’ll have to wait for the twentieth post to find out who it is. (It will not be a surprise.) I also have suggested their greatest performance in my opinion, as well as their most interesting performance which is often not the same and finally, their worst performance. I will discuss each at length. 

With that lets get on with number 20. 

20- Daniel Day Lewis 

Daniel Day-Lewis. Looking Irish. Looking Roguish. 

Greatest Performance - Bill the Butcher (Gangs of New York)

Honourable Mention- Gerry Conlon (In The Name of The Father)

Worst Performance-  Daniel Plainview (Their Will Be Blood)

Some of you who know me are probably surprised he made the cut, as you are aware of my disdain for the method and those arrogant actors who have to think, feel, eat, sleep, shit their character (mainly because I can’t do that. I generally force my characters to bend to me and not the other way around.) Yet, Daniel has left indelible effect on how I look at characters. In an article that contained an interview with him I read years ago he said something very important that I have never forgotten:

 “acting in a scene is not about helping your partner act but giving your partner something to fight against. They must stand up to you. You must not prop them up.”

I am sure those of you who believe the other way would think this is inordinately selfish but take a moment and examine the thought. He is not saying ‘you must scene steal;’ he is saying give your partner an obstacle to fight against and that is the ultimate prop up. When you know you have force as an actor, own it, don’t bend for your partner it makes the scene more interesting and therefore memorable. Two atoms bouncing off each other. This has always stuck with me and every time I step out to do my thing, I always go full force with my choice. I always attempt to present something tough to go against. In my experience this has often intimidated or made other actors not ‘trust me,’ I think was term used, but I have also worked with actors who ‘brought the proverbial it’ and these few are my favorite to work with. I have never met one that pushed me back to the point of submission, but once a female got damned close. You know who you are. 

Anyway, Bill the Butcher. No one can say that he did not ‘bring it’ in that film. He is unabashedly the worst kind of American fanatic in any film, which is hilarious  considering he is so very Irish and this film was about the Irish. I believe he was helped in the fact that no American actor really could grasp a character that strikes at the heart of the evils of American patriotism and xenophobia because like it or not US friends, it is instilled in you from birth. An outsider needed to look at this terrible stage in American development. Four American actors who turned the role down before Day-Lewis donned the Glass eye. I have read the Herbert Asbury book this film was based on and Daniel Day-Lewis not only looked picture perfect, he also embodied what Bill sounds like in the accounts of him.  His greatest moment is the scene I have posted. Bill in all his foul glory is wrapped in the American flag delivering a compelling morning monologue about his greatest conquest. 

Gerry Conlon is his most interesting character because Gerry is actually very unlikable though this film. He is a layabout and generally wisps through life. But the extraordinary circumstances that he finds himself in, change him so very much. Day-Lewis plays this with intense understatement. Also I think Pete is the greatest scene partner he ever had. Pete clobbers Daniel in many of the scenes they share in this film and that is no easy feat. 

His worst performance is a controversial pick no doubt as he won an Academy Award for it. But an Oscar does not a brilliant performance make. (As my actor number 1 will no doubt prove.) He is so over the top in this film. His interpretation of Plainview is so absurd that it becomes unreal in film that is trying to be very real. Plainview is Bill the Butcher on cocaine with a Quaker accent. It took me nearly a week to get through this film because I could not stop myself from laughing at everything D. was doing and thereby missed entire scenes of important dialogue. I am not sure what was the point of this film nor how the choices that were made by Day-Lewis were not reigned in. I actually got a Jim Carrey vibe from him when I first saw this film. (I love Jim but not when Day-Lewis does him.) Enjoy Daniel Day-Lewis taking his own personal philosophy to the astronomical extreme. See how it does not work.

Me and Snobbish Theatre

In August of last year (being 2011) I was sitting upon the couch at Einstein’s Pub on College Street celebrating the birthday of one of my compatriots who really does not care for his birthday. In this dark College Street student dive with relatively moderate priced beer for such a place, we had a shared idea. It seemed that both of us were at a quarter life crisis (more so him then me) and we felt compelled that we had to undertake some artistic endeavor. The two of us decided in our drunken stupor that we wanted to produce our own show. There was no lofty intentions, no great Marinetti-like manifesto, no Brechtian thesis, we just wanted to mount and perform our own production. A naive almost childlike idea, yet one that to both of us at the time wished to pursue. 

Pursue we did and upon this compatriot’s plant filled jungle-like balcony we founded the elementary shell of a theatre company called ‘Snobbish Theatre.’ The reason for our choice in name comes from our shared enjoyment of the imagined situation that actors would have to exclaim ‘I must go audition for Snobbish Theatre,’ or ‘today I am going to see Snobbish Theatre.’ This was a kind of Be Sharp’s (Simpson’s reference) joke which to me, being a year on, still causes a snicker in the caverns of my head.  Anyway, terrible personal jokes aside, I now found myself in command of my own artistic entity. 

This entity though began to crumble almost at its conception. We had trouble finding an affordable space for our production. We intended to stage a new version of William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Why this play? Publicity wise because it is a play that seems more relevant today with the rampant epidemic of bullying and drinking in the young 20-25 generation. (Fanshawe College anyone?) Truthfully, I cannot recall why we chose this play. Perhaps because of the same reasons. I am a self confessed bully who drinks too much and my compatriot is certainly a drinker as well. Perhaps, we saw ourselves as a modern day Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew, I don’t know. Anyway, I digress... Neither one of us really quite grasped how much money it cost just to rent a performance space in this artistically unfriendly city.  This is a real problem in Toronto theatre and one that will be further discussed in later posts. We have a high population of artists in this city but little affordable space to perform or rehearse. Long story short, this caused a rift in our partnership and my drinking buddy jumped ship. I have no ill will to this individual and realized in the time of 2011 Autumn he was in an emotional pit that not even Orpheus could drag him out of. Alas, I was left to go it alone and go it alone I did. 

I pursued the performance even though I had entire casts drop out on me. Some of varied reasons for this exodus were ‘they didn’t like the fact that some of the cast was relatively new to Shakespeare;’ an issue that is far too prevalent amongst the supposedly trained young actors of Toronto, (that being said this arrogant person will never be caught dead in anything I produce again, no matter how talented they were)  or they had been offered some more glittery gig; which in some cases I fully understood and in others I considered the choice to be assholish beyond a Burro. Yet, after months of struggle we compiled a cast that we were and are quite proud of. What I learned from this undertaking is:  you may wish to work with new acquaintances and folks you have never met nor worked with before, but ultimately it is your friends who are the best to work with as they will generally stay around to see the project out. Also they understood if they abandoned me they would feel my wrath and I have one that Sauron would envy. 

The first project; Twelfth Night or Whatever (a modern witticism), in its finished state certainly did not incur my Dark Lord Middle Earthian wrath.  We had a moderate audience and made a little bit of a profit in spite of unforeseen costs and a lack of adequate coverage. The product was one I should have been proud of, but for some reason I wasn’t. It was not anywhere near my original vision. It bore no resemblance to what I saw way back in the drinking pits of College Street on that birthday. I had an empty pit in my stomach where pride should have been. Here was a successful endeavor that had made a little money, and I could not enjoy it. What was this pit, I asked myself? What kind of terrible person would do this much work, have a little success and hate the finished product?

Fast forward to June of this year (2012), two months after the show had closed, and I was  wallowing in self pity of the fact that I had to spend my coming summer in the classroom to finally graduate. At this time, just for extra enjoyment, I lost my day job. My my employer had made some terrible business missteps that anyone with an iota of understanding of the arts world would not do. In turn this spurred on a publicity nightmare and finally destroyed company. (You know the company. It rhymes with Manclap Croductions.) I was in a dire mood that fueled on a booze filled sadness. In the midst of this turmoil I had a realization. The reason I felt so depressed about this achievement was because even though it was a good production it had very little of me in it. I do not mean me physically, but me personally. The production was mired in a world and style I had no understanding of.  I had to grasp with a grain of salt this subculture because I was logistically backed into a corner through all sorts of mishaps. The Director was forced to stretch for straws to save the production from sinking, and I applaud her for this, but this left a show that was definitely not up to either our likings. (Please do not take offense if you are reading this for your efforts are very much appreciated.)  What my next project would have to be is one that is fulfilling to me personally. One that did not give over to limitations, but one that relished in them. I then set about on a journey to create one of my dream ideas. 

It has been my dream, ever since I played Deflores briefly in a series of vignettes to mount a speedy and fast paced version of Thomas Middleton and William Rowley’s The Changeling. This play is edgy, driven by a sexy women (my favourite type) and is dark, while being humorously, violent. It is also a play that is rarely performed in Canada as is anything by any of Shakespeare’s contemporaries (again another blog posting). Suddenly I was alive again. I spent every waking hour editing the script to fit my vision and even some of my ‘should have been sleeping’ hours as well. I felt an artist again. 

Will it ever see the light of day though? Will I be able to find the cash and the locale to perform the play? I hope so and am doing everything within my fiber to see its fruition. 

Dear viewer, reader or whatever the fuck you are, you may wonder now ‘what you should I take away from this tiresome story?’ Here’s what I think you should take away from it. Always do art that you feel inspired to complete, not something that you are just doing to do something. Never go out to do work just for the sake of doing work. You will hate yourself for it and ultimately feel empty while being full of fatigue. The bad type of fatigue. We only live for 70 years or so, hopefully, so why waste it doing things to fill time or make contacts. Do it because in your stomach you have too, because if you don’t you’ll be left a quivering pool of nonfulfillment. Do it because you have a feeling that there is much to do, for at Snobbish we certainly have much to do about The Changeling. We will do it with a shimmering Much to Do smile upon our face!